Brazil’s biggest app developer, Movile, is taking its on-demand delivery service into the Mexican market through a joint venture with Grupo ampm. The deal will cement Rappido’s position as the largest on-demand delivery service in Latin America. Read More

Codecademy, an online coding school with 16 million registered users, has built out its footprint without charging its students a penny to use it. Now, as more questions arise about how and when the startup might start monetizing its services, it is announcing $30 million in new funding that could be an indication of what might come next.
Naspers, the (for-profit) media giant based out of… Read More

More big U.S. corporate names are entering Africa’s tech space and testing new models there.
UPS took its first steps in the African drone delivery space teaming up with San Francisco startup Zipline, and Gates Foundation backed Gavi, to begin unmanned aerial transport of healthcare supplies in Rwanda. Read More

According to a recent study by Accenture, investments in fintech hit $5.3 billion in the first quarter of this year (having grown 75 percent in 2015, exceeding $22 billion). These are staggering figures for a still nascent industry, which can have a monumental impact on all sectors, from lending and investments to savings and payments. Read More

The venture arm of Naspers Ltd. has invested $60 million in Udemy, an online marketplace for education.
For the unfamiliar, Naspers is a Johannesburg-listed tech and media firm that operates robust online classifieds businesses in emerging markets, with a strong presence in India.
Udemy CEO Dennis Yang said that after closing a $65 million Series D round of funding in the spring of 2015… Read More

Naspers, the 101-year-old, internet and entertainment group, is finally planting a flag in the U.S., establishing a Naspers Ventures unit that will operate largely out of San Francisco.
The 30,000-person company, which is based in Cape Town, South Africa and tends to focus on less developed markets, including Latin America, Africa, India and even Russia, said its decision to come to the U.S. Read More

E-commerce giants with ambitions to build regional Amazon rivals in emerging markets continue to rake in huge amounts of funding. Today, comes the latest development: Souq — an online marketplace that has been described as the Amazon of the Middle East — has announced that it has closed a funding round of over $275 million (AED 1 billion) to continue building out its business in… Read More

Avenida is set on cementing its leadership position Argentina’s e-commerce market after a $30 million Series C led by Naspers with participation from Tiger Global (both firms are returning investors). Read More

Latest Crunch Report

As the Internet matures and becomes more crowded with services and data, startups building services to make better and more accurate sense of what’s out there are seeing their stars rise. In the latest development, SimilarWeb, an Israeli company that provides websites and mobile app publishers with intel about their own traffic and that of competitors, has raised $25 million in funding… Read More

Tencent has made its first investment in Africa under the banner of its WeChat messaging service. WeChat Africa, a joint venture between Tencent and Naspers, announced an investment in M4JAM (Money For Jam), a South Africa-based mobile job service that connects to WeChat. Read More

Movile, the Brazilian mobile shopping and entertainment company is doubling down on its investment in kids programming and entertainment with a new $5 million investment.
The move, which occurred earlier this month, is the latest in a series of investments meant to bulk up the company’s mobile platform as it expands internationally.
Movile is funneling the money into its PlayKids a, an… Read More

China’s internet giant Tencent and South Africa’s media powerhouse Naspers are doubling down on tech in India. TechCrunch has just found out that Ibibo, their domestic joint venture, has acquired redBus.in, an online bus ticketing company that has become a dominant and disruptive force in how people travel in the country. A formal announcement is coming out shortly. Read More

South Africa’s Naspers has agreed to merge its two Russian online classified Web site with Avito in a $570 million deal that will make Avito the world’s third biggest classified site after Craigslist and China’s 58.com. Read More

Exclusive – The founding team of LiveChat, which delivers real-time software and web analytics solutions for e-commerce sales and support teams, has completed a management buy-out to regain control over the company, TechCrunch has learned. The founders were looking to get back a controlling equity stake in the company, and teamed up with PE firm Tar Heel Capital to acquire a 60%… Read More

Multimedia juggernaut Naspers has entered the Turkish internet market with a bang by acquiring approximately 70 percent of the shares of markafoni, a Turkish private shopping club, through its subsidiary MIH-Allegro. Our source in Turkey says the investment values markafoni at around $200 million.
Markafoni is the third biggest ecommerce company in Turkey, and has ambitions to become a… Read More

Last week I wrote about Computer Village, where many of the gadget-hounds in Lagos go to get their gadgety fix. But what about new technology being developed in the country? The city’s tech entrepreneur scene is small, but several people are working on changing that.
Oo Nwoye– or @oothenigerian as he’s known on Twitter– is one of the more enthusiastic champions of… Read More

The Myriad International Holdings unit of Naspers has acquired a controlling interest in social networking and shopping site operator Multiply, we’ve learned.
Multiply will continue to operate under the same management team.
This company was originally founded in 2004 and raised $26.6 million in venture capital funding over the past few years in a bid to compete against the likes of… Read More

Internet investment group Digital Sky Technologies (DST) today formally announced the acquisition of Russian social network Odnoklassniki.ru, which we reported on last week.
DST has bought out out the minority shareholders in Forticom Group Limited – which it now fully owns – and Odnoklassniki, and interestingly transferred its interest in the Polish social network Nasza-Klasa.pl… Read More